Southern California-based trio Rec Hall, made up of John Barry (vocals, guitar), Lance Meliota (drums), and Ben Tyrell (guitar, bass) burst onto the scene in 2021 with breakout single “She Doesn’t Get It.” The song, over the next two years, slowly but organically gained traction, now accumulating over 20 million streams, and led to the group signing with Arista Recordings in 2023.
Individually, Meliota appears to be the quiet one in practice but displays the most understated moments of levity. Tyrell is the most analytical. Barry, as the frontman, is the clearest choice for band ambassador. As a unit, they are as loose and maturely immature as you’d expect from a group of three earlyish-20’s California boys signed to a major label.
They just wrapped their second leg of tour opening for fellow Arista act Beach Weather. Their debut EP Localism, featuring “She Doesn’t Get It,” dropped this past December, and their latest single, “How Long,” is out now.
Examining the process of Beach Weather has allowed the band to begin to prepare for their own headline experiences to come. “It’s the duality of sounding good versus performing well,” said Meliota. “You’re putting on a show, at the end of the day. For me, it’s the amount of fun I’m having onstage. It directly correlates to how well I play and, I think, how fun I am to look at play. If I’m all in my head and making these subtle mistakes, I just won’t have fun. But, if we’re all feeding off each other’s energy… everyone else has more fun watching, and it sounds better.”
“Our best shows of the first leg were from really great crowds,” Barry added. “We fed off their energy and did more onstage. We also had shows with… not the best crowd. That was so different and out of our control. We realized we can’t be relying on the crowd to give us this energy every night, we have to be internally supplying our energy.”
Rec Hall’s music is a mixture of the contemporary Southern Cali indie pop-rock sound of Wallows and almost monday with the more classic, post-punk/Brit-rock influence of The Strokes, The Clash, and Interpol. The music is lively, respectfully edgy, and well sung/structured. The verses of “She Doesn’t Get It” are as instantly hooky as something out of a car commercial, while the song overall is the best case for the band as a true west coast act.
“If You Run,” featuring more of an ambitious arrangement and vocal performance, is punchier with a more subdued melodic groove. “Pontiac” begins with a more retro, Beatles-like sound before shifting towards the indie rock sound of their other tunes.
Their EP Localism widens its scope to the idea of the term of the same name, defined as a preference, and perhaps a possessiveness, of ones living environment. The project saw them dissect, question, and cherish the fabric of their home life, diving into both the beauty and ugliness of the culture. Surfing, which Barry and Meliota confirm as being around 95% isolated thought and 5% action, is somewhat of a sacred activity… a sort of mental reset for locals.
“Localism is, in one sense, specific to the surf culture, but if you abstract it away from that and think of it as an attitude of preference towards one’s local area… when you get to a certain age, you just want to be out of there,” said Tyrell. “I was feeling sour about being in this bubble… then going on tour and returning, it gives you a new perspective.”
Rec Hall
“The ugly are the gatekeepy parts about where we live,” added Barry. “It comes from a place of protection, but also a place of, ‘I want to experience this, but not with others.’ That’s the duality of it. It’s like ‘Pick up your trash, but also… just don’t come.’”
Their latest single “How Long,” out now with an accompanying DIY music video from the road, sees the band needing to find ways to process being away from home as extensive travel has quickly become a necessary part of the job. Lamenting under a more pulsating vocal approach and instrumental meant for a dancehall than their typical alternative rock fare, the trio explore a sensitive topic while pushing their sound forward.
“It was more of the anticipation of that feeling,” said Barry, explaining how the song was written and developed before they had even hit the road for the first time. “The anxiety. Instead of writing the song like, ‘How’s it gonna be?,’ we wrote it as, ‘How long until we get home?’” Unlike “If You Run,” which took upwards of two years to finalize, “How Long” took two days. They credit raw emotion for the quick turnaround.
“You never know how much the subconscious plays,” added Tyrell. “So, maybe I really was writing it thinking about tour… but for me, when I was writing it, I didn’t realize that that’s what I was writing about. Then later, it became that for me.”
Making music on the road, specifically under the guise of Beach Weather while in close quarters, has been on the agenda. An album will come at some point, though plans and ideas for what that project will look like are still to be determined. “There’s no wish list, it’s more of an emotional and psychological idea of how I want to relate to the songs we put on it,” said Tyrell. “I want all of it, or as much of it as possible, to feel like us… unfiltered. Something bold, different, and new.”
“I’ve also been really open to not committing yourself to one thing,” he continued. “What might have been our primary influence on something we were writing two years ago, we might not think about at all anymore. Now, we might be drawing from a completely different palette.”
“What I can definitively say about it right now is that I just want to proud of it,” added Meliota. “Whatever ends up on there, I know it’s going to be what we want.” Barry closed the book on it, saying: “I think we all know exactly what we want to sound like, we just have to find out how to make that sound. The end goal of this album is to carry out the vision that we share.”
In the recent wave of new emo and punk bands, Dogleg have become one of the most undeniably promising rising voices.
Late last year, the Michigan band garnered an underground buzz for "Fox," an anthemic bruiser of a single that perfectly emblemized the genre's potential for catharsis. With their debut album Melee on the horizon, the band have shared another song, "Kawasaki Backflip," that proves there's much more where the powerful spirit of "Fox" came from.
"Kawasaki Backflip" hinges on a similar theme of emotional release, from the headbanging guitar riffs right down to the various homewares the band members destroy in the music video. It bears a sense of timelessness, the kind of soaring energy praised in their forebearers like Titus Andronicus and Japandroids a decade ago.
"Tear down the walls, we don't need them now / Lay on the carpet, just burn it out," frontman Alex Stoitsiadis howls. "We can destroy this together." Like those words suggest, "Kawasaki Backflip" embodies a surge of liberation.
The story of psychedelics is intertwined with the story of music, and tracing their relationship can feel like going in circles.
For thousands of years, artists have been using naturally-grown herbs to open their minds and enhance their creative processes. Since LSD was synthesized by Albert Hoffman in 1938, psychedelics have experienced a reemergence, blooming into a revolution in the 1960s, launching dozens of genres and sounds that focused on acid, shrooms, and all of the portals they opened. Around the 1960s, scientists also began studying the relationship between psychedelics and music, and even back then, researchers found that, when combined, music and psychedelics could have therapeutic effects on patients.
More modern studies have discovered that LSD, specifically, links a portion of the brain called the parahippocampal—which specializes in personal memory—to the visual cortex, which means that memories take on more autobiographical and visual dimensions. Other studies have found that LSD can make the timbres and sounds of music feel more meaningful and emotionally powerful. Today, psychedelic music still thrives, and you can hear flickers of those early trip-inspired experiences all across today's modern musical landscape.
"There is a message intrinsically carried in music, and under the effects of psychedelics, people seem to become more responsive to this," said the psychedelic researcher Mendel Kaelen. "Emotion can be processed more deeply. It's a beautiful narrative. It's like a snake biting itself in the tail."
All that said, psychedelics can be as dangerous as the archetypal live-fast-die-young rock and roller's average lifestyle. They can destabilize already fragile minds and can encourage further drug abuse and reckless behavior. Often, psychedelic revolutions have coincided with colonialist fetishizations, apocalyptic visions, and appropriations of Eastern culture.
However, sometimes psychedelics and musical talent can come together in a synergy so perfect that it can literally create transcendent and healing experiences. Hallucinogens affected each of these following musicians in a unique way, but their experiences with hallucinogens produced some of the greatest music of all time.
Harry Styles — She
In his revelatory Rolling Stone profile, Harry Styles spoke out about how magic mushrooms inspired his most recent album, Fine Line. Inspired by Fleetwood Mac, the 25-year-old apparently spent a lot of time at Shangri-La Studios in Los Angeles tripping and listening to the old psychedelic greats.
"Ah, yes. Did a lot of mushrooms here," he said in the interview during a tour of the studio. "We'd do mushrooms, lie down on the grass, and listen to Paul McCartney's Ram in the sunshine."
Things even got a little violent, as they often can when dealing with hallucinogens. "This is where I was standing when we were doing mushrooms and I bit off the tip of my tongue. So I was trying to sing with all this blood gushing out of my mouth. So many fond memories, this place," he reminisced affectionately.
Kacey Musgraves' dreamy song "Slow Burn" was apparently inspired by an acid trip. Listening to the lyrics, you can hear the influence of psychedelics twining with country and singer-songwriter tropes. "I was sitting on the porch, you know, having a good, easy, zen time," she said of the songwriting experience, which she said happened out on her porch one evening. "I wrote it down on my phone, and then wrote the songs the next day with a sober mind."
LSD, she said, "opens your mind in a lot of ways. It doesn't have to be scary. People in the professional worlds are using it, and it's starting to become an option for therapy. Isn't that crazy?" Her affection for the drug also appears in her song "Oh What A World," which contains the lyric, "Plants that grow and open your mind."
A$AP Rocky — L$D
While A$AP Rocky's affection for LSD isn't a surprise given his propensity for writing about the drug, apparently the rapper has an intellectual approach to his psychedelic experimentation.
"We was all in London at my spot, Skeppy came through," he told Hot New Hip Hop about his experience writing LSD. "I have this psychedelic professor, he studies in LSD. I had him come through and kinda record and monitor us to actually test the product while being tested on. We did the rhymes all tripping balls."
Apparently his first acid trip happened in 2012. "Okay, without getting anyone in trouble, I was with my homeboy and some trippy celebrity chicks and…" he said in an interview with Time Out. When asked how long it lasted, he said, "Too long, man. Twenty-three hours. I was trippin' till the next day. When I woke up, I was like, Damn! I did that shit! That shit was dope. It was so amazing. It was a-ma-zing. Nothing was like that first time."
Acid changed his entire approach to music and success. "I never really gave a f*ck, man, but this time, I really don't give a f*ck," he said. "I don't care about making no f*cking hits." Instead, he focuses on creating. "It's so hard to be progressive when you're trippin' b*lls," he said. "You make some far-out shit!"
The Beatles' later music is essentially synonymous with LSD, and the band members often spoke out about their unique experiences with the drug. According to Rolling Stone, the first time that Lennon and Harrison took it was actually a complete accident. A friend put LSD in their coffee without their knowledge, and initially Lennon was furious. But after the horror and panic faded, things changed. "I had such an overwhelming feeling of well-being, that there was a God, and I could see him in every blade of grass. It was like gaining hundreds of years of experience in 12 hours," said Harrison.
Paul McCartney had similar revelations. LSD "opened my eyes to the fact that there is a God," he said in 1967. "It is obvious that God isn't in a pill, but it explained the mystery of life. It was truly a religious experience." Of LSD's effect, he also said, "It started to find its way into everything we did, really. It colored our perceptions. I think we started to realize there wasn't as many frontiers as we'd thought there were. And we realized we could break barriers."
Using the drug not only helped the band create some of the most legendary music of all time—it also brought them closer together. "After taking acid together, John and I had a very interesting relationship," said George Harrison. "That I was younger or I was smaller was no longer any kind of embarrassment with John. Paul still says, 'I suppose we looked down on George because he was younger.' That is an illusion people are under. It's nothing to do with how many years old you are, or how big your body is. It's down to what your greater consciousness is and if you can live in harmony with what's going on in creation. John and I spent a lot of time together from then on and I felt closer to him than all the others, right through until his death."
Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds (Remastered 2009)www.youtube.com
Ray Charles — My World
The soul music pioneer allegedly once described acid as his "eyes." Charles was blind, but LSD is said to have allowed him some version of sight. Though he struggled with addiction, Charles eventually got clean, though his music always bore some markers of his experiences with the subconscious mind.
Actually, blind people on LSD and hallucinogens can experience hallucinations of different kinds, though it's somewhat rare. According to a study in the journal Consciousness and Cognition, this happens because during a trip, "the plasticity of the nervous system allows the recognition and translation of auditory or tactile patterns into visual experiences."
Clapton struggled with drug abuse throughout his life, and LSD certainly had an influence on him. While he was a part of Cream, he frequently played shows while tripping, and according to outontrip.com, he became "convinced that he could turn the audience into angels or devils according to the notes he played."
Before he was creating the ultimate dad rap, Chance the Rapper was an acidhead.
"None of the songs are really declarative statements; a lot of them are just things that make you wonder...a lot like LSD," said Chance the Rapper of his hallucinogen-inspired album, the aptly named Acid Rap. "[There] was a lot of acid involved in Acid Rap," he told MTV in 2013. "I mean, it wasn't too much — I'd say it was about 30 to 40 percent acid ... more so 30 percent acid."
But the album wasn't merely about acid; like much of the best psychedelic music, it was more about the imagery and symbolism associated with the drug than the actual drug itself. "It wasn't the biggest component at all. It was something that I was really interested in for a long time during the making of the tape, but it's not necessarily a huge faction at all. It was more so just a booster, a bit of fuel. It's an allegory to acid, more so than just a tape about acid," he said.
Jazz great John Coltrane was a regular LSD user who used the drug to create music and to have spiritual experiences. Though he struggled with addiction throughout his life, LSD was one drug that had a major artistic influence on him. While it's not known for sure if the album Om—which includes chanted verses of the Bhagavad Gita—was recorded while Coltrane was on LSD, many rumors theorize that it was.
"Coltrane's LSD experiences confirmed spiritual insights he had already discovered rather than radically changing his perspective," wrote Eric Nisenson in Ascension: John Coltrane and His Quest. "After one early acid trip he said, 'I perceived the interrelationship of all life forms,' an idea he had found repeated in many of the books on Eastern theology that he had been reading for years. For Coltrane, who for years had been trying to relate mystical systems such as numerology and astrology, theories of modern physics and mathematics, the teachings of the great spiritual leaders, and advanced musical theory, and trying somehow to pull these threads into something he could play on his horn. The LSD experience gave him visceral evidence that his quest was on the right track."
Jenny Lewis — Acid Tongue
Rilo Kiley frontwoman Jenny Lewis wrote the song "Acid Tongue" about her first and only experience on LSD, which happened when she was fourteen. She told Rolling Stone, "It culminated in a scene not unlike something from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas—the scene where Hunter S. Thompson has to lock the lawyer in the bathroom. I sort of assumed the Hunter S. Thompson character and my friend – she had taken far too much – decided to pull a butcher knife out of the kitchen drawer and chase me around the house… At the end of that experience, my mom was out of town on a trip of her own and she returned to find me about 5 lbs lighter and I had—I was so desperate to get back to normal I decided to drink an entire gallon of orange juice. I saw that it was in the fridge and decided that this would sort of flush the LSD out of my system, but I didn't realize that it did exactly the opposite."
The Beach Boys' mastermind Brian Wilson was famously inspired by psychedelics, which both expanded and endangered his fragile and brilliant mind. After his first acid trip in 1965, an experience that he said "expanded his mind," Wilson wrote "California Gurls." After the trip, however, Wilson began suffering from auditory hallucinations and symptoms of schizophrenia, and though he discontinued use of the drug, he continued to hear voices; doctors eventually diagnosed him with the disease. Wilson later lamented his tragic experiences with LSD, stating that he wished he'd never done the drug.
Though it led Wilson on a downward spiral, LSD inspired some of his band's greatest work—namely the iconic Pet Sounds, which launched half a century of "acid-pop copycats."
The Flaming Lips — Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots
The Flaming Lips' "Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots" is widely believed to be the product of lead singer Wayne Coyne's LSD experimentation. This theory is corroborated by the fact that the album's cover features the number 25 (and LSD is also known as LSD-25). They also frequently reference LSD in their music, which includes an album called Finally, the Punk Rockers Are Taking Acid.
the flaming lips yoshimi battles the pink robots part 1www.youtube.com
Jimi Hendrix — Voodoo Child
While there is still some general contention on whether Jimi Hendrix hallucinated frequently, nobody really doubts that he did. According to rumors, the legendary musician even used to soak his bandanas in acid before going onstage so the drug would seep through his pores.
According to one source, Hendrix did more than just play music while tripping. He was also an expert at (of all things) the game of Risk.
"Jimi would play Risk on acid, and I never — and me personally — ever beat him at all," said Graham Nash in an interview. "He was unbelievable at it. He was a military man, you know, he's a paratrooper, and I don't know whether you know that about Jimi, but no one ever beat him at Risk."
The Doors — The End
Jim Morrison was a documented LSD user, and it eventually led him out of his mind. "The psychedelic Jim I knew just a year earlier, the one who was constantly coming up with colorful answers to universal questions, was being slowly tortured by something we didn't understand. But you don't question the universe before breakfast for years and not pay a price," said John Desmore in Riders on the Storm: My Life With the Doors.
Morrison used many different drugs during his lifetime, but apparently LSD had a special place and he avoided using it while working. "LSD was a sacred sacrament that was to be taken on the beach at Venice, under the warmth of the sun, with our father the sun and our mother the ocean close by, and you realised how divine you were," said Ray Manzarek. "It wasn't a drug for entertainment. You could smoke a joint and play your music, as most musicians did at the time. But as far as taking LSD, that had to be done in a natural setting."
Morrison himself—a visionary who was also a drug-addled narcissist—was kind of the prototypical 1960s LSD-addled rock star. Alive with visions about poetry and sex but lost in his own self-destruction, he perhaps touched on something of the sublime with his art, but in the end he went down a very human path towards misery and decay.
Like many of these artists' stories, Morrison's life reveals that perhaps instead of using hallucinogens and psychedelics as shortcuts to a spiritual experience, one should exercise extreme caution when exploring the outer reaches of the psyche. When it comes to actually engaging with potent hallucinogens, that might be best left to the shamans, or forgotten with the excesses of the 1960s.
On the other hand, we might do well to learn from the lessons that people have gleaned from hallucinogens over the years—lessons that reveal just how interconnected everything is, that shows us that music and memory and nature may just all stem from the same place.
The video for "Eat, Sleep, Wake (Nothing But You)"—Bombay Bicycle Club's first new music in half a decade—begins with with a foreboding, albeit slightly satirical, message: "In 2016, the UK was rocked by a seismic event," reads the screen. "Bombay Bicycle Club went on indefinite hiatus. Without their music, British society crumbled."
"To be honest, I didn't feel that way personally," bassist Ed Nash admits, calling me from the band's native London. "I think we all tend to worry and be hard on ourselves. Before coming back, I thought, 'I wonder if everyone's forgotten about us?'"
But those worries were soon relieved. Though it's been six years since the beloved indie pop quartet released the massive, dazzling So Long, See You Tomorrow, the announcement of their reunion in early 2019 was received with a swarm of overwhelming support. Bombay Bicycle Club's fifth album, Everything Else Has Gone Wrong, is due January 17, but they've already been reeling in fans' excitement, having spent much of 2019 touring.
When I caught one of Bombay Bicycle Club's back-to-back New York City shows in October, they'd only released one new single since their comeback; still, over 1,500 dedicated fans filled the pit. Some jumped and yelled every word, while others stood near the back in admiration—everyone, it seemed, had been patiently waiting for the band to come back.
Below, Nash discusses the motives behind the reunion, what fans can expect from Everything Else Has Gone Wrong, and how "terrifying" it feels that their debut album is a decade old.
Bombay Bicycle Club - Eat, Sleep, Wake (Nothing But You)www.youtube.com
Popdust: So many bands announce a hiatus and then just never return. Did you envision Bombay Bicycle Club coming back or did you think the band was finished?
Ed Nash: In all honesty, I don't think any of us knew at all. We used the word "hiatus" because it was the most fitting thing. Bands like LCD Soundsystem say they're breaking up and then they get back together, like, a year later. We didn't want to do that. But at the same time, we didn't have any plans to do anything. Everyone was doing something different, and then it was kind of in doing our separate things that gradually made us realize what we had and start talking about doing it again.
How did the reunion come about?
I was doing my project (Toothless), and going through that, you kind of realize all the things you've taken for granted over the past 10 years: playing shows, being able to talk and work with other people. All of us kind of had a realization that [Bombay Bicycle Club] was actually something really, really special to us, and the time off made us think that. It kind of coincided with like this year's 10-year anniversary of our first album. We started talking about doing some 10-year anniversary shows for that, just to mark the occasion. But we're all 28 or 29; it'd be ludicrous to do our 10-year anniversary shows now. We're not in our 50s! But we thought because we missed playing shows, and because everyone was still up for it and still liked each other, we figured we might as well make new music. It was a slow process of realizing what we had and then being excited to work on music together again. Part of the reason we took the time off was because we weren't excited about these things we felt we should be excited about.
I was thinking of the lyric in "Everything Else Has Gone Wrong" that goes "I guess I found my peace again / And yes, I found my second wind." What moment did you find your second wind?
In 2014, we were on tour for, like, nine months of the year. And playing in the States should be the most exciting thing in the world, but after doing it for so long, things that you were previously super excited about become annoying. I'd be like, "Oh, man, I've got to go to Berlin. That's so annoying." You kind of catch yourself. You shouldn't be tired or annoyed by that, and if you are, you need to step away from it. So, yeah, I guess making this album was our second wind. Everyone was up for it.
Bombay Bicycle Club - Everything Else Has Gone Wrongwww.youtube.com
A big theme of this album is "about finding hope and safety in these times of despair." Besides the hiatus, were there any other moments of despair you felt in the process of this album?
On the album is a song called "Good Day," which I wrote, and it's a similar theme to "Everything Else Has Gone Wrong." I love doing music, but for quite a while, I was wondering if it was the right thing to do or if it was time to pursue something else. [I was] worrying about things that actually don't matter that much and picking things apart. I certainly found that incredibly prevalent when we took the break. The band was part of my identity and what I've been doing my whole life, and then all of a sudden, I didn't have it. I think that those are themes on the album, just finding a place in the world, getting older, finding friends and companions. But it's all with the underlying message that music will always be there, regardless of the problems.
Did reuniting the band help you find hope and safety?
Yeah. I mean, I wasn't in the worst place in the world, but being able to come back to those people you've spent your whole life with is a really, really positive thing. Just having people there that make you feel like you're never alone is lovely. Coming back to that felt really good.
What were you listening to when you wrote the album? I was wondering if you revisited any of your old material, since it reminds me a lot of A Different Kind of Fix.
Jack, who writes most of the music, was listening to a lot of jazz and classical music—music without words. I think he fell back on that and was just enjoying music for its melody and structure. I was listening to a lot of radio and podcasts and audiobooks, which can be helpful and quite inspiring in a different way. You're taking in so much information that you never knew before. For me, it's the equivalent of reading tons of books. Also, listening to other artists' interviews went into the creative process, for sure.
I don't think [the similarities to A Different Kind of Fix] were intentional, but I agree with you completely. I think with the first four albums, because we were very young when we wrote them, we were forever changing and taking on different ideas and being quite magpie-like. Our first record was very straightforward indie rock. The second one was kind of acoustic-folk. The third, I wouldn't even consider a guitar record—it's kind of an electronic-pop record. I think we've been able to kind of cherry pick the best bits from all of those. So it's more of a mix, I would say, which led to it sounding a bit like A Different Kind of Fix, because that one was kind of our crossover point.
Since you just did 10-year anniversary shows for I Had the Blues but I Shook Them Loose, what's your relationship with that album now, a decade later?
It's terrifying to think about. I don't listen to it. Not because I don't like it, but because it's just so attached to memories of being a teenager and what you were doing at that time. It's quite emotional. I was 18 when we recorded that record, and we didn't really tour it that long after it came out because we'd moved on to our next album pretty quick. So it's weird playing these shows. And these were by far the biggest shows we've done, playing a lot of these songs we hadn't played since we released the album. So it is emotional coming back to it. It very much highlights the fact that you're not a teenager anymore, which is quite a strange thing. But the really positive side of it was that the shows were absolutely amazing. And when we released the album, we played to 250 people in the pub and nobody gave a f--k. We just played to 5,000 people, and they were singing all the words back to us. I'm so glad we revisited it, because it wasn't as big of a thing at the time. It's just kind of shown that this record has become something a bit more than itself.
During his short 27 years on earth, he changed the fabric of music forever, leaving behind a body of work that would leave an indelible impression on millions.
Hendrix was born in Seattle, Washington, and began playing the guitar at 15. At 16, he received his first acoustic guitar from his father—an acoustic Supro Ozark—and from there, the young prodigy started performing with his first band, called the Rocking Kings.
He kept playing throughout his time in the army, and after being discharged, he started playing as a session musician. Initially gaining traction in Greenwich Village, he eventually formed the Jimi Hendrix Experience with drummer Mitch Mitchell and bass player Noel Redding.
The group's first single, "Hey Joe," came out in 1967, and soon after, the infamous "Purple Haze" was released. Hendrix established himself as a legend with "Wild Thing," and then Electric Ladyland. In 1968 he started his own studio in New York City, Electric Lady Studios. In 1969, he split skulls with his blistering Woodstock rendition of "The Star Spangled Banner," a version that embodied a deep-rooted rage at America and its violent heart.
Hendrix died in 1970, but his legacy is eternal. Described by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as "the greatest instrumentalist in the history of rock music" and widely renowned as the world's greatest guitar player ever, he's notorious for his innovative fusion of blues, funk, and psychedelia, blending tradition with visionary use of pedals and various technologies.
What exactly made Hendrix's music so exceptional? In terms of technique, he was endlessly inventive and relied on an ever-expanding wheelhouse of signature skills. For music theory buffs, Hendrix used a chord called the Dominant 7#9 chord. Often called the Hendrix chord, it's notorious for its expressive tension. Hendrix also typically tuned his guitar a semitone below concert pitch, enabling him to perform intense bends (a technique that involves bending a string to change the note, which creates Hendrix's signature wailing guitar tone).
What Makes Jimi Hendrix Such a Good Guitaristwww.youtube.com
But Hendrix's extraordinary technical and musical skills were made transcendent by some unnameable factor, something that had less to do with technique and more with an ability to tap into the energy at the core of music and life.
Regarding Hendrix's cover of his song "All Along the Watchtower," Bob Dylan said, "It overwhelmed me, really. He had such talent, he could find things inside a song and vigorously develop them."
The Jimi Hendrix Experience - All Along The Watchtower (Audio)www.youtube.com
Guitarist John Frusciante perhaps touched on what made Hendrix so truly great when he said, "He's bending sound, taking care of music in every dimension. Where most people think of it in two dimensions, he's thinking of it in four."
JAMESDAVIS is a band composed of three siblings: fraternal twins, Rey and Jess, and their brother, AusTon Reynolds.
Signed to Motown records, they capture a sound that could be described as the future of R&B. But that might just be for lack of a better term, seeing as their music does a great job at sidestepping any singular genre. For the group, it's more about conveying a particular feeling, regardless of what anyone may want to call it. And that is clearly evidenced in their constantly evolving and untethered sound, even between one song and the next on their album.
JAMESDAVIS recently agreed to sit down for a Q&A to discuss what it's like making music as a family, how their sound has evolved over the years, how music and faith has helped them to overcome hardships, and what the future holds for the band.
It is somewhat rare these days to come across a family band. Was music always a central component of your family dynamic growing up? How did the band come to be?
JESS: Our mother was a professional background vocalist, and though our father was a professional baseball player, he played the organ and the drums. So, music was always around us. The reason the three of us decided to work together as a creative team was the hope of finally becoming financially free, while simply using our gifts. Our mother convinced us that it was possible by teaching us faith our whole lives. Our brother turned the only bedroom in our small apartment into a studio, so my mom put all the beds in the living room, and the rest is history.
REY: There wasn't a time where music wasn't a part of our lives. Though the three of us started creating and singing at different times (Jess being the first with her first deal at 15), I believe JAMESDAVIS was destined to be. I believe our purpose in life is to live and do what you love, and I thank God that we have a Mother who taught us that your dreams are meant to be your reality. We fell on some really difficult times, and I'm actually grateful for those times because we banned together and found our way out through music.
What is the meaning behind the name, JAMESDAVIS?
JESS : "James" is our father's middle name and "Davis" is our mother's maiden name. There's no space between the names because there's no space between us.
Your latest release, MASTERPEACE, has (and please correct me if I'm way off) what I would characterize as a bit of an "edgier" sound than some of your previous efforts. Was there a specific aesthetic you were striving toward with that project? Where do you see your music going from here?
REY: I've heard that from various listeners, and everyone has their own take on the sound, whether they hear it to be edgier or more R&B...For us as writers and producers, we don't create with an aesthetic in mind. It's about a feeling, telling a story, and being honest. We create in service of the song and the music. It's also the reason why we, as a band, have never subscribed to one singular genre. Each project we've done has represented where and who we are, as individuals and as a band, in that time and space.
AusTon: I think we're just getting better with communicating our situations, stories, and things about ourselves. I think we always strive for excellence with our music, regardless of what the aesthetic feels like. Our music can go wherever we would like it to go, but I would like to do more music with live instrumentation.
You just returned from touring in Europe. Might we be seeing you perform anywhere else this summer?
REY: We've been traveling nonstop for the last three months, doing promo and the tour, and we just finished doing a couple of local shows in Leimert Park [Los Angeles]. This week we're headed to New Orleans to perform at the Motown event during Essence fest. We have festival dates coming up, including "ONE MUSICFEST" in Atlanta in September. I'm really looking forward to getting back into the studio and getting started on our next project.
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